Men’s Liber-urination: How installing home urinals will save the world from misandry

What’s the deal with MRAs and urinals? You may recall the highly touted “URLs @ urinals” campaign from last year, a plan to plaster little posters over urinals in public bathrooms to lure peeing men to Men’s Rights websites; evidently the way to a man’s heart is through his urethra?

Oh, and who can forget GirlWritesWhat’s weird FemRA lament that men hanging out in men’s bathrooms can’t even bitch about women any more due the encroachment of evil mangina language police. (Note: Men in public bathrooms do not actually talk to one another.)

Well, now the MRA videoblogger who goes by the nom-de-internet of ManWomanMyth has weighed in on the Urinal Problem in a long and rambling blog post titled, and I am not making this up, “Urinals – a genesis for male psychology?”

MWM (let’s just call him that) argues that “male spaces” have been so encroached upon by evil feminists that men have no place they can truly call their own.

Why are female spaces inviolate and male spaces forcibly opened to females?

Why are males spaces not seen to be equally as important as female spaces?

I’ll tell you why, it’s because under our Feminist governance, anything that maintains or leads to any concept of male camaraderie or the enhancement of male self-awareness is actively attacked and suppressed. It’s vital in our society to strip men of their identity as ‘men’ so that they can be assaulted in the myriad ways. …

By preventing the development of male-bonding and understanding between men (which is difficult enough, even under the best of circumstances) men are successfully kept isolated from each other and more easily used and abused.

Seriously, he’s got a point here. If you look at the various photos of corporate Boards of Directors I gathered together in this old post, you’ll notice that a couple of them even have some ladies in them!

So what does this have to do with urinals? MWM explains:

This is where urinals-in-the-home comes in. …

By installing one in your home, what I think is being done is making a claim to a portion of space and making that claim based solely on the fact of your manhood.

Only men can successfully stand up to pee, women have no choice but to sit down. This is a point of difference that has little relevance in normal daily life, but has every relevance to male psychology.

You see, the urinal is just for you as a man. It’s impossible for her to use it. It’s for you. For your son. For your male friends.

In other words, MWM thinks that men (cis men, anyway) should have them installed in their bathrooms for no other reason than that (cis) woman can’t use them. In your face, bitches! Try peeing in THIS! YOU CAN’T!!

Though I should note that this does not stop women from trying, as this album cover from the 1970s clearly documents:

MWM goes on to explain the logic behind this new crusade:

There is no means by which the exclusive use of the urinal can be taken away from you by any claims of unfairness or any other irrational female claim.

There can be no quotas for the female use of urinals; there can be no Presidential Council for Women and Girls calling for more ‘Women into Urinals’; the UK Minister for Women could create no tax-payer funded programme to encourage girls to be the same as men and use urinals.

It’s yours because you are male and can only remain yours.

Now you might ask yourself, why the fuck would anyone care about this? MWM has an answer to that question as well:

Why is this important?

I think that this is an example of a beginning, a genesis for male self-awareness. Particularly if you have a young boy in the household. It could well be the first thing and perhaps even the only thing he will ever encounter in his young life that is not ‘equally’ open to girls and there is no ‘equalities’ agency that can do anything about it.

Most boys grow up today having to play every sport and share every activity with girls and woe betide him if he seeks to win or is too aggressive. …

The urinal could be the only thing in his life that is for him and exclusively for him and others who are like him in only one essential way: they are also male. …

This is a little space in the bathroom, a little space in his life, where his sister can’t go and doesn’t want to go and couldn’t go if she did want to. It’s off limits because she is not male. …

A urinal is not particularity interesting in itself, but it may well be a first step in the development of a sense of self for boys and men that otherwise typically never happens or else is savagely crushed in men. A catalyst towards a sense of what it means to be male and a first seed of understanding of the essential difference between the sexes which goes beyond mere anatomy. …

This is where anti-misandry starts.

While all this is very moving, I don’t think it goes far enough. Consider the Home Pregnancy Test. This is something that woman can pee on, but men can’t – at least not without being ridiculed by society for peeing on such a girly thing.

Wait, you might say. If (cis) men get urinals to pee on, why can’t (cis) women have these little sticks that they can pee on? Because these pregnancy tests involve little chemical strips that CHANGE COLOR when you pee on them, depending on whether or not you’re pregnant. Urinals don’t change color! And that’s not FAIR!

Comments

“Not that that’s an okay thing to shout at any kid, but it was an extra level of fucking stupid watching him yell at, say, my friend who stood a whopping 4’9” at age 18 about how she sucked forever because she wasn’t super-great at spiking volleyballs.”

Yeah, that’s definitely its own category of stupid. I really can’t imagine any other type of teacher getting away with that, can you imagine this — “you can’t name all 50 state capitals?! You suck and will suck forever!”? Or “what do I need algebra for?” “to not suck forever!” Yeah, I see both of those ending in the teacher getting reprimanded, yet gym teachers are allowed to be assholes. Gym teachers being more of the “knock it off, just because you’re good at the sport doesn’t mean everyone has to be!” variety would almost certainly help here.

“I don’t think studfinders are magentometers. I think they are some sort of sonar based densitometers. I’ve never had a problem using them.”

Do you buy the expensive kind? The cheap ones I had thought were magnet based, but the expensive ones might actually work.

“I think most of them were san water, though I am sure some has constant flow. They were long projections of enameled iron, so that a woman could lift her skirt and (wearing split bloomers) straddle them and let go.”

Ah ok, I’d known about the trough type, but had thought that fell out of favor with the “invention” of flush toilets (more things Rome did two thousand years before the rest of us…)

“Guys would piss in bottles. Some were bad at it.”

…how do you fucking fail at that?! I don’t really want to know, I just don’t frikken get it…

“The only reason to stand is that I’m in a public restroom (and so am more vulnerable if my pants are down)…”

Stalls have locks, usually, I mastered the fine art of holding the door closed with my foot back in HS. A locked stall seems like more protection than a urinal would provide, but gustibus non disputandum est 🙂

I wish PE classes were segregated by ability, regardless of gender. I think both the athletic and the unathletic kids are totally sapped of their motivation when they’re constantly playing games where everyone knows who’s going to win.

I guess being assigned to the “weak group” at PE would be sort of embarrassing? But then you can get some good competition going between the weak kids and make them feel like their efforts actually make a relative difference. And meanwhile you can give the strong kids an actual challenge instead of just letting them win by steamrolling totally intimidated opponents.

“I guess being assigned to the “weak group” at PE would be sort of embarrassing?”

I was thinking it could work if you defaulted to the “meh whatever” group and could opt in to a “yeah I’m good at this” group — that kid who broke my damned toe was a soccer player treating gym soccer like a proper game (and I suck at basically every sport involving a ball, tennis being the only exception).

JeanM – “I only think murder is okay if the murderer feels provoked” works out to, for all intents and purposes, “I think murder is okay.”

Most murderers consider themselves sufficiently provoked. That’s not special. It’s how murder usually works. That doesn’t make it okay.

It’s also quite a leap from a “normal person can be provoked [to] respond in an unpleasant manner” to murder — most people can be provoked into calling you an asshole, maybe even a fist fight, but murder? (And bad timing much? Aren’t we already questioning what makes murderers “snap”? Maybe not justify it for oh, idk, a week?)

Ohhh I fucking hated P.E., and mine was gender segregated. The ultra-competitiveness and willingness to stamp down anyone in your way is pretty present in alot of girls that age as well.

If we were given a choice, I used to hang around and play badminton or squash with my friends, and that was cool, but there was nothing so humiliating as being dragged out to play football, shoved immediately into goal and then informed “you have to stop the ball, you know…” >.<

Teachers rly rly didn't help this atmosphere, I think picking teams is HORRIBLE for children to go through, as someone who was often picked last. The two sportiest girls pick one by one who they would like, until you are left standing alone and someone is forced to take you. It still brings me out in a cold sweat now. This mostly happened when I was playing netball, which I was actually pretty good at as it wasn't as intense and gave you time to stop and think.

I went to a great deal of effort to skive off P.E. lessons, and it was nothing to do with being lazy.

(Also changing rooms are fun when you are 'still' wearing a sports bra and forgot to shave under your arms that day! O the horror!)

There are urinals for women in South Korea. They’re the troughs inside the subway station public bathrooms. Ladies: drop trou, grab the handles on the wall, step up onto an elevated platform, swing that ass out over the trough, squat, and let it go. I’m not even kidding. I’VE DONE THIS. Suffice to say I’d rather piss in an outdoor field.

Also, squat toilets in both men’s and women’s restrooms are the pits, especially in winter, ESPECIALLY when having to deal with pantyhose. #Protip: if you’re dressing up in Asia and need stockings, wear thigh-highs. It’ll make peeing much easier.

“I guess being assigned to the “weak group” at PE would be sort of embarrassing? But then you can get some good competition going between the weak kids and make them feel like their efforts actually make a relative difference. And meanwhile you can give the strong kids an actual challenge instead of just letting them win by steamrolling totally intimidated opponents.”

Alot of the ‘weak group’ might be pretty good once they weren’t in an environment where they had to aggressively compete with people who were the best at sport and/or much higher in the school food chain.

Alot of the ‘weak group’ might be pretty good once they weren’t in an environment where they had to aggressively compete with people who were the best at sport and/or much higher in the school food chain.

Hell yeah to this. Making kids feel like shit about themselves is not the way to imbue them with a love of physical exercise.

I think gym class should treated more like recess, actually. Give kids a variety of play options, be they actual sports or what the fuck ever else, and let them discover something they enjoy doing.

I also think it’s absolutely stupid that gym class is something you get graded for. “Oh yes, your kid is fully qualified to graduate in every other respect, but I’m afraid they didn’t play enough dodge ball.” I ask you, what the fuck is that?

My PE teacher was also the pastoral care tutor. Their solutions to my problems? “Try to fit in” and “play more sports”.

They always have this attitude that everyone likes sport as much as they do, and are as good at sport as they are. I got a lot of “if you tried harder, you’d really like it!” which I thought was balls. I was trying as hard as I could, I just sucked.

On the plus side, I did accidentally hit the pastoral care PE teacher with a rounders bat twice and I also clipped them on the head with a badminton racket, so…
And I broke a table-tennis table. 😀

“I also think it’s absolutely stupid that gym class is something you get graded for. “Oh yes, your kid is fully qualified to graduate in every other respect, but I’m afraid they didn’t play enough dodge ball.” I ask you, what the fuck is that?”

Wtf is that = my last year of HS — I needed gym and English to graduate, and could’ve fulfilled the English credit the year before. This did mean I had a whole lot of time free my senior year (which was mostly spent trying to wrangle the GSA into something functional…and doing homework).

In other words, I think they require 4 years of gym just to prevent people from graduating at 16.

“I think gym class should treated more like recess, actually. Give kids a variety of play options, be they actual sports or what the fuck ever else, and let them discover something they enjoy doing.”

And graded pas/fail if you show up and don’t just sit on your ass? As long as the “whatever the fuck you like” option had the pool open, I’d be down with that. (And I don’t mean the nice relaxing “it’s a pool” you normal people do, I mean 50+ laps in 40 min, because I’m part fish or something — you’d have to be a royal asshole to decide that wasn’t worth a passing grade)

I’ve always wondered how people manage with the squat toilets when wearing complicated clothing. I used them in the Middle East, and but it usually wasn’t a big deal because I was wearing either a long skirt or loose pants (since that’s all I was allowed to wear in public). But I know tons of Japanese punk/goth women who wear shorts over tights, and that seems like it would be tricky to manage with a squat toilet. I may have to ask a friend about this next time we’re both drunk.

I think the world would be a better place is there were more swing sets rated to accommodate adults. If folks not getting enough exercise is a concern, why not make an effort to ensure that people don’t think of it as drudgery? What precisely is so wrong with fun?

I could totally go for an adult-size version of one of those climbing structures made of wire that they have at playgrounds. Not that I couldn’t use the kids version, I’m short enough, but people would look at me funny.

Cassandra — TMI warning — pull everything down to knee level, not all the way down, idk if it’d work in a full length skirt and stockings, but works well enough in shorts or a shorter skirt (bondage pants with all those straps and buckles and dangling bits are more of a problem, stockings at least stay close to your skin).

I’m mostly trying to figure out how you’d do it without flashing everyone. With a skirt you can kind of shield yourself a bit, with but shorts + tights I’m thinking your ass would be fully on display. Probably less potential for mess than with a long skirt, though.

Also I’m imagining trying to do this in 4 inch heels, or platforms, so there’s that too. The first time I tried to use a regular toilet that happened to be kind of low while wearing 6 inch platforms I had a moment where I was all, this is like being in a rapidly sinking elevator.

Did some call for more fun? (You know how I always plug Emilie Autumn? The Toy Soldier you all know and hate irks me big time as Dr. Steel’s toy soldiers are my FWB’s pet project to plug, and your TS is not about more fun)

I think the issue with platforms is that you can’t feel the ground under your feet at all. It takes a while to get used to. I’ve never had any issue with heels, but I nearly killed myself the first time I tried to run down the stairs to catch a tube in platforms, wouldn’t wiped out completely if my friend hadn’t caught me.

Woo! I hated sports in school (at least middle school) just because they’re so.. authoritarian about it. Luckily they didn’t grade you on it, just as long as you actually turned up so you didn’t get in trouble.

Firstly, it would be nice if they didn’t force kids to do sports they aren’t built for. They made every boy do rugby in school, and considering I weigh barely 110lbs now, you can see the issue there.

They also made us do things like football (soccer) in the middle of winter, and didn’t let us wear anything to keep us warm. Even if it was raining, windy and cold as fuck, we still had to wear just shorts and a shirt. Same with swimming, outdoor pool regardless of weather, but at least I could just float about and not do much in the “crappy swimmers” group (I suck at swimming, and i’m aquaphobic). Also, we had to wear swimming caps, and I hated that.. it felt like a headcrab was eating my head. 🙁 And the time I just didn’t want to do swimming because it was freezing cold outside, and the teacher actually threatened to throw me in the pool.

Those are nice way to make someone hate certain sports though, if that’s what you’re going for. Unfortunatly in middle school, there wasn’t really a way for me to get out of doing stuff (we had the opportunity to do that in upper school though, but I didn’t really use that for avoiding sports, that was reserved for “General Studies” which I think I went to maybe three classes out of a whole school year – we used to just walk to the nearest town and have lunch instead).

There was only four sports I liked doing in school, and only like three that I was actually good at. Gymnastics was pretty fun, just because you could jump off high things onto soft things all the time, and they let us make up randomly awesome gymnastics courses to use by piecing together all the parts as we wanted. I was a pretty good sprinter too (cross-country on the other hand, ouch), but that didn’t do good things to my legs in the end. I was decent at badminton (and it was pretty fun)! Last one that I was actually any good at (actually, I kicked arse at it for some reason) and enjoyed a bunch was hockey (of the field variety).

As for genderings, our sports weren’t as gender-segregated; they only really separated us for specifically gender-coded sports, ie. rugby, football (soccer) etc. Thinking about it, that was mostly for the male-coded ones (I guess you could say the really physical ones), because the boys still did things like gymnastics. Girls did things like netball instead of football and rugby.

Activities that were theoretically supposed to be about promoting physical fitness frequently turned into the guys screaming, “HOW COULD YOU MISS THAT, YOU FUCKING MORON?!” at the girls, shoving them out of the way, and generally exhibiting all the douchiest traits of the recently-pubescent. Understandably, if sadly, most of the girls responded to this by deciding we didn’t need that shit and would just do our best to participate as little as possible.

Hahaha, but they do this to the less-athletically-inclined boys too. I fucking hated flag football (tackling optional but encouraged), volleyball, badminton, tennis, definitely anything that required any level of hand-eye coordination. My goal was not to win but just to lose gracefully. Going through a class without completely whiffing with the badminton racket was a good day. Otherwise, I got teased, etc.

I wouldn’t have a problem with PE as a class if it was actually a class, where they taught stuff, instead of just throwing you out onto the field and saying “go”.

I remember once in elementary school, we had to complete an “obstacle course,” and part of that involved sliding down a pole, and I had no idea how to do that, and basically just fell. And of course any competitive game, you were just told the rules (if you were lucky), and not things like “here is how you hold and swing a bat”.

And yes, JeanM = definitely troll. Combination of heinous statement and complete indifference to being the topic of discussion. Anyone actually interested in engaging with the community would have said something about not really being a troll.

We had co-ed PE throughout my school years. I do think it would have been helpful to break it up by gender, mostly because in any semester where we were playing team sports (soccor, flag football, basketball, vollyball, etc.) most of the girls would be actively excluded. It didn’t matter if you were actually good at the sport–and for a big girl, I was decent at vollyball; it was my favorite and I played a lot with friends and family–you just could not get the ball passed to you, and if the ball did happen to come into your area, there was always a boy to jump in front of you and take it. So after a couple of weeks of trying to participate, most of us just ended up standing around for 45 minutes, bored as hell, waiting for it to be over, while the game played around us. Of course, that meant we would get a terrible PE grade because we weren’t “participating”–never mind that the gym teachers did jack shit about the way we were excluded. The one time I tried to point this out, the teacher just said, “Stephanie and Monica are doing fine. Stop making excuses for being lazy.” (of course all fat kids are lazy!) and didn’t listen when I tried to explain that, yeah, a couple of girls were agressively going after the ball and fighting back, but a) they were in much better physical condition that we were, and it took them a long time for the boys to even grudgingly accept them–regardless of the fact that they were often *on* the school team for whatever sport we were playing, and b) they straight up didn’t care about being called bitches and dykes, while some of us were still having trouble managing to make it through the school day without being physcially assaulted or bursting into tears. Yeah, gym teachers are not the most empathetic people, in my experience.

When I could, I would chose the non-sport classes, like aerobics, pilates, or even *walking* (hated walking, it was just 45 minutes of laps around the track, but at least they left you alone and your grade was soley based on how well you did). Of course, I heard two gymn teachers trying to use the high percentage of girls in the walking/aerobics classes to “prove” that girls didn’t really want to play sports, and thus Title IX was bullshit, without ever considering *why* girls didn’t want to being in the team classes (like, OH I DON’T KNOW, the fact that you are TERRIBLE AT YOUR JOB?!).

I think PE is important, but not the way its currently done. Aside from gender issues, there were no accomodations made for kids who were not physically fit or who had medical problems. In fact, if it was structured for anyone, it seemed to be for those at the top of the class already. At the time I felt like shit for not being able to fully participate (thanks, PE teachers, for making me hate myself more than I already did), until I got older, actually learned about exercise, and realized that what they were making me do was UNSAFE. No, some of us aren’t lazy, useless princesses, some of us literally cannot physically do things that other kids can. And because there was no accomodation (and I couldn’t handle the emotional abuse) I ended up getting a medical pass and spending almost all of PE in study hall with the pregnant girls–which, stupid, we could have really used PE, too, but they would rather just keep us out than work on the problem (who is lazy in this scenario?). From talking with a couple friends getting their degree in the field, there just isn’t enough education given on how to accomodate and help (and not psychologically abuse) overweight kids (or other kids with disabilities). There really should be, especially with the rising number of overweight kids. The solution is not to just have them sit out PE or humiliate and marginalize them while they’re with the class.

Eh, sorry for the ramble, this is something that’s really important to me, and I think there should be more attention paid to the issue.

Argenti and Cliff-you both may want to take a long nap and then get out into the fresh air for awhile. You seem to always be on the defensive and bitter and pounce on anything that doesn’t fit into your narrow view of things.
I write unpleasantness and you both turn that into murder and imply that I was condoning murder.Unpleasantness means just that and if the word doesn’t happen to be in your Newspeak dictionary then a suggest that you get a real one.
And you may want to go poke a wasp’s nest or carry your cat around by its tail to get an idea what unpleasantness is. The cat is not trying to murder you but just protecting itself.

We had co-ed PE throughout my school years. I do think it would have been helpful to break it up by gender, mostly because in any semester where we were playing team sports (soccor, flag football, basketball, vollyball, etc.) most of the girls would be actively excluded.

Yup.

The other reason I spent gym class wishing all the boys would go away was that it was somehow anathema to make the boys do “girly” sports. I mentioned that I was a varsity athlete; I played field hockey, which is a sport that, in the US, is inexplicably coded as being for girls only. Which meant that not once, in all the years I had gym class, did we ever play any field hockey at all, despite my school having all the equipment to accommodate it, but we could play flag football 800,000 times. We also could not do any form of dance, yoga, gymnastics, archery, or really anything that sounded particularly fun to me. The few times students suggested such things, we were told, “No, we have to do things everyone will enjoy,” which was sort of hilarious given that the whole point of those suggestions was generally, “Please, for the love of god, stop making us play flag football and volleyball over and over.”

(Excluding dance was particularly stupid and obviously gender-based because my school had a national-championship-winning dance team with a truly awesome coach who repeatedly volunteered to teach a gym class unit on dance. She could not be taken up on that, but apparently we could regularly have the school’s soccer coach – who had helpfully led the boys’ soccer team to a succession of spectacularly losing seasons – come scream at us about how we were even worse than the actual soccer team. Not that that was hard, given that his entire coaching technique appeared to consist of yelling, “KICK THE BALL, DAMMIT” a lot.)

I played field hockey, which is a sport that, in the US, is inexplicably coded as being for girls only – Polliwog

Thankyou! I’d picked up the idea that field hockey was female-coded from somewhere and I had no idea where it came from. It was in the back of my mind bugging me, since it’s generally not gender-coded over here (in my experience, anyway) so I didn’t know whether i’d just made it up.

It’s annoying when you pick up something cross-culturally and then have no idea where it came from.

“Argenti and Cliff-you both may want to take a long nap and then get out into the fresh air for awhile. You seem to always be on the defensive and bitter and pounce on anything that doesn’t fit into your narrow view of things.”

I just woke up, you still seem like another incarnation of our standard hateful trolls.

@Not-JeanM — I have remembered though that my freshman year, before I transferred, required PE, with the “do what you want” clause. I swam, a lot (indoor pool, so the weather didn’t stop me). I can’t imagine there’s enough difference between college frosh and HS students that HS students wouldn’t do something given the option to do whatever sport/activity they wanted. I’m the type to see any body of water as an excuse to swim laps, so maybe I’m an outlier here?

I was a fat, uncoordinated kid who had trouble doing laps around the gym in middle school, and yet my most humiliating gym experience was in college. I had to get a couple of PE credit hours as a requirement, so I signed up for a PE class my freshman year. The first thing that happened was everyone was weighed and they had a measurement test where they pinched up the skin of the thigh and measured it with calipers. We were given to understand that our grade would be based in part on losing weight if we came up overweight on that test.

We also had a walking test I remember, in the cold, grey morning one week. We had to do X laps around the track without running (plenty of people cheated), and we were graded on our total time. The coach had a printout with some walking times broken into percentiles based on some study, I didn’t get a good look at it. So if you turned out to be in the 90th percentile, your grade was 90. You had to be faster than three-quarters of the people in the study to get a passing grade on this thing. In hindsight, I don’t blame people for jogging a bit and cheating. The thing was bullshit.

Anyway, I still had three or so laps to go, I turned out to be the last one on the track, and from the far curve of the track, I saw the coach pack up and go in.

I was so humiliated I burst into tears. Then I went in because it was fucking freezing and I didn’t see the point.

I’d picked up the idea that field hockey was female-coded from somewhere and I had no idea where it came from.

I think of field hockey as being coded for women. Probably has something to do with how my college had a field hockey girls’ team and no boys’ team. The boys had football and soccer and basketball and baseball (the girls had soccer and basket ball and softball). I guess they thought that football being exclusively a boys’ sport and field hockey being exclusively a girls’ sport balanced out.

OH and do I really have to rant about how girls are allowed to play baseball only if they pitch underhanded? Can we stipulate that I have done so?

I know someone who had basically that happen — iirc it was soccer (though maybe that’s what you meant, we need to stipulate to calling American football that, or something) — but he spent a couple of months on crutches.

Yet another reason I do not do ball sports, jut put me in the pool, please.

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